Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i Cricket Magazine Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories for Children and Young Teens

In the beautiful green hills of the Basque Country, three brothers lived together on a little farm. The farm might be small, but it was fertile and well-kept, with fields and an orchard clustered around a trim little house, painted red and white in the Basque style. Every week, one of the brothers would take it in turn to go to market and sell their produce. Depending on the season, it might be tomatoes or apples or peppers or cherries or cheese or grapes or eggs or many other things. One fine market morning, the eldest brother, Eneko, set off with a sack full of fine grapes. Along the road, he met an old lady, who asked him, “So where are you going with your sack?” “To market,” Eneko replied.…

EACH TIME HELGA Estby looked over her shoulder, the big cat was there. Crossing Wyoming’s Red Desert on foot, in the dust and heat of August 1896, was tough. Being stalked by a mountain lion made it frightening as well. Stopping before dark, Helga and her eighteen-year-old daughter, Clara, built a fire. They kept it burning all night, taking turns on guard duty, their Smith & Wesson revolver cocked and ready. When the sun rose, the lion was nowhere to be seen. How did two women end up alone in the desert? In the early 1890s, Helga Estby lived with her husband and nine children on a small farm outside of Spokane, Washington. Ole Estby worked the land and earned money as a carpenter in the city. Helga raised the…

Barmbrack bread, or bairin breac in Irish, is a traditional cake served during the holidays and especially at Halloween. Besides being delicious, biting into a slice of barmbrack gives a glimpse into your future. Bakers press small tokens, usually a ring, a coin, a dried pea, or a piece of cloth, into the cake batter. If you find the ring, you’ll be married in the year. Finding a coin foretells wealth and fortune. A piece of cloth predicts poverty. And a dried pea means you’ll never be hungry. WHAT YOU’LL NEED: 21 / 2 cups dried fruit (golden raisins, cranberries, blueberries, cherries, or prunes cut into raisin-size pieces) 2 cups black tea (preferably an Irish blend) 21 / 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 / 2 teaspoon nutmeg 1…

I knew the dangers of witchcraft. My parents had told me about the time before I was born, when magic plagued our desert kingdom of Bahati. Untrained witch doctors trying to cure warts ended up paralyzing their patients or turning them into crocodiles. Amateur potion brewers tainted their villages’ water supplies. Warring witch clans cursed each other back and forth, and their poorly aimed spells destroyed houses, burned crops, and scared away the hogs and gazelles that we all needed for food. Magic was capable of nothing but wickedness. That’s why my parents, the king and queen, had outlawed it twelve years ago, banishing all practitioners who were caught. A witch had not been seen in our kingdom for over a decade. Magic had faded into myth, into legend, into…

In the Graveyard late at nightSkeletons dance by lantern light,Hand on hip, toe and heel,Whirling around in a Scottish reel. Rattle, rattle, rattle, elbows and shins,Happy skulls with gaping grins,Tall ones, short ones, see them pranceBack and forth in their Highland dance. Around and around those dancers whirlTo the phantom bagpipes’ skirl,Heads thrown back, arms held out,All night long they swirl about. And so they dance till break of dayWhen gradually they fade away;In stately procession, see them passLeaving only the dewy grass.…

It’s trick-or-treat time, and this Cricket is haunted by witches, wizards, dragons, ghosts, alien cows, and weird alternative universes. To get in the mood for the Cricket Country Halloween party, everybuggy wants to see your best drawing of something spooky. Will your art reveal witches cackling around a cauldron or a powerful wizard casting spells in his castle tower? Perhaps you will draw a fire-breathing dragon or other magical creature from mythology. Maybe you will imagine a creepy haunted house in your neighborhood, or trick-or-treaters being chased by ghosts through a graveyard. Or perhaps your spooky drawing will be more fun than frightening, like a goofy alternative universe or a magical gathering of fairies or your friends in their costumes at a Halloween party. Whether you are spooked by headless…

Oh, when I was a carnivore,My dinner parties were a bore.Yes, guests would cross my welcome matBut did not dare to stay and chat. No guest would stay the whole meal throughFor fear they’d end up in a stew.Not one would trust me as their host;They thought they’d end up creamed on toast. It’s true I ate a guest or two,But guest ingestion made me blue.For fear I’d have no friends againI became vegetarian. And now my parties are a hit.I don’t miss crunching bones one bit.This dragon now has friends galore,Cuz now I am a veggie-vore!…

They sleep, the tops of the mountains and the depths,the headlands and the sources of the streams,all the species of creeping-things that black earth nurtures,the mountain-bred beasts and the genus of bees,the monsters in the ravines of the surging seas,the species of wide-winged birds, they sleep . . . Alcman, who lived in ancient Sparta, was regarded as among the best of the early Greek poets. This fragment of a now-lost larger poem, perhaps about a nighttime festival, was composed around 620 BC and preserved by a Roman author for its interesting vocabulary.…

LEE WAS ONE of those people who figured all things could be explained. There was a perfectly good reason why bumblebees have six legs and why bark on a tree is brown. It made perfect sense, too, that Lee was lying in a dumpster. He was lying in a dumpster because the much larger Max had thrown him there. Max had thrown him there because Lee had looked at him funny. Lee had looked at him funny because he was scared of getting thrown in the dumpster like the last three days on his way home from school. Perfect sense. The dumpster was empty, which was worse because it hurt when Lee dropped to the cold, hard bottom. He wished it was filled with lots of garbage to cushion his…